Peter Miskiw the Society expert on the History of Astronomy in Bolton has uncovered more documentation about the History of the Society

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1 THE BOLTON ASTRONOMER The monthly journal of the Bolton Astronomical Society November 2012 ISSUE No. 18 Next Meeting Researching Star Formation David Eden Liverpool John Moores University 6th November 2012 Wanted images and articles from members about their equipment setup Beginner s welcome the Editor lenadam@sky.com In this Issue Missed some issues of the Journal? Peter Miskiw the Society expert on the History of Astronomy in Bolton has uncovered more documentation about the History of the Society Image Processing Secrets Part 8 David Ratledge SHOOTING THE MOON IN FULL COLOUR Images from BAS Members November Objects of Interest Hubblesite Carl Stone November Objects Video Jupiter Len Adam Processing a Jupiter Image using Registax 5.1 Ross Wilkinson BAS Calendar Mike Schaffel Jupiter Have you spotted it yet? Please send magazine articles & contributions to the Editor Len Adam. lenadam@sky.com MEETINGS: Ladybridge Community Centre Beaumont Drive Bolton BL3 4RZ Non-members invited to drop in to meetings which are held every other Tuesday evening at 7.30 p.m. 2 charge per meeting or 20 annual membership. Go to to find the next meeting. There are plenty of parking spaces at the centre.

2 WHICH NORTH WEST AMATEUR ASTRONOMER LIVED HERE? AND WHY DO WE THINK THAT IT WAS MARIE CURIE S FAULT THAT HE PROBABLY DIDN T SPEAK AT THE SOCIETY MEETING IN 1914? SEE THE ARTICLE INSIDE BY PM AND LA

3 Images from society members David Ratledge Ross Wilkinson

4 Dean Kos Ross Wilkinson Comet 168P Hergenrother I switched to taking dark frames during the two periods when the clouds came over, hence the star trails appear as three dashes

5 L. Renshaw Gerald Bramall

6 Ian Martin Ross Wilkinson

7 David Ratledge David Ratledge

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12 PREVIOUS ISSUES: Following a number of queries from members about past issues of the Journal remember that any of these are downloadable from the member s section of the website. Some front page samples are below. Click on this page to go to the download page on the website. The Newsletters (including copies of this Journal) are in Library Newsletters. You will need to log in.

13 Thursday 11 th October 2012 Comet 260P McNaught October 2012 Observations Leyland Observatory Len Adam A sample of observations and comments from my personal log for last month. Similar content from any member of the BAS welcome for future Journals! Len Adam (Full log is here). (44 PAGES) Not a very good month in Lancashire for observing so having access to remote telescopes is an excellent alternative for some targets. However using a remote telescope for a supernova search would be expensive for example imaging 200 galaxies at 30 seconds each a typical night using my C14 under clear skies would take 100 minutes of time just for imaging and with a typical rate of $1 per minute would cost $100 per night even if access for that length of time were possible. However using a remote telescope to check a suspect supernova is a different matter. Clearly you need to use a telescope where you can get a quick response otherwise it would be pointless. For objects such as Comets or Asteroids remote telescopes are extremely useful. As indicated by the P in its title this comet is a periodic comet. It has a period of 7 years. One advantage of using a remote telescope is that you can acquire images at convenient times. I was able to get this image at 8.27 BST on Thursday morning 11 th October. This telescope is part of the itelescope.net organisation which allows you to directly control the telescope and receive immediate images a fully automatic system. The orbit of Comet 260P McNaught can be seen by visiting the Jet Propulsion Laboratory website page for this object that uses a Java Applet that allows you to set the date and see exactly where it is in relation to the solar system and the Earth. Set it to 11 th October to correspond to the above image. You can see that the comet is just outside the orbit of Mars and is classified as a Jupiter family comet. When the image was taken it was at a distance of 0.59 A.U. The website is

14 Saturday 13 th October 2012 This turned out to be quite a busy day for astronomy for me. 0168P Comet Hergenrother. Frustrated by cloudy skies I decided to use the itelescope.net telescope network to image this comet which was discovered recently. The telescope I used was the same as above a Takahashi TOA150 and the camera an SBIG ST2000XMC. This combination gives a field of view of 27.8 X 37.1 minutes of arc. Two images of Comet Hergenrother were taken which clearly show the movement of the comet. The FITS data file below shows the Date and Time of exposure. (U.T.) for each image. Both exposures were 5 minutes. The position given in RA and DEC is the centre of the image. As can be seen from the FITS files images were taken 31 minutes apart giving an indication of the rate of movement of the comet. Using the Jet Propulsion Laboratory applet and setting the date to the 13 th October 2012 gives its orbital position just crossing the orbit of Mars and a distance of 1.42 Astronomical Units from the Sun.

15 Having taken the above images through the itelescope New Mexico Takahashi refractor at New Mexico Skies on the morning of 13 th October I was able to take a series of images from my observatory in Leyland during a clear (but moist) spell that night. One of these is shown below. This is a 15 second image using my C14 and SBIG ST9XE using an f/6.3 focal reducer giving an image size of minutes of arc. Unlike the above images my CCD chip is square so the dimensions are the same on X and Y axes. The galaxy NGC 7777 is shown on the image. This is a 13 th magnitude lenticular galaxy with a Major axis of 1.2 minutes of arc. I came across a video in Flickr that caught the comet at the same time but is upside down in relation to mine. North is up in my image. It also shows the nearby galaxy. To keep up with comets that are current go to this (really ) excellent website: The website suggests comets to observe for telescopes of different apertures. Go to the finder chart for each comet.

16 Having imaged the comet I turned my attention to a galaxy run to search for Supernovae. I decided to image galaxies in Cygnus as the constellation had cleared the massive oak tree to the South West of the observatory. I have a list of 42 appropriately selected galaxies in Cygnus as below. All images 30s C14+SBIG ST9XE. Images of a few of these are shown below. The star pointed at by the arrow on the right in NGC 6946 turned out to be a hot pixel. Note that South is UP in all these galaxy images. No SN found. NGC 6946 centre NGC 6824 RV 334 km/s RV = 3802km/s PGC NGC 6764 All of these images have a field of view of X The setup that results in this FOV is shown on the next page. RV = 2667 km/s RV = 4103 km/s PGC RV = 7453 km/s km/s The recession Velocity of each galaxy is shown at bottom left. (From Principal Galaxy Catalogue) The larger the recession velocity the further away the galaxy is. To calculate the distance to each galaxy I simply divide the Recession Velocity by the Hubble Constant. (I assume this is 75 km/second per Megaparsec. ) 1 Megaparsec is 3.26 million Light Years to put it in more familiar terms. The Hubble Constant tells you how fast the Universe is expanding so if the Universe was expanding faster the Hubble Constant would be larger and the distance (for a particular recession velocity) would be less because the galaxy took less time to get there!

17 Leyland Observatory Current Imaging Set Up (One of two that lock the Primary Mirror) The arrangement that is delivering a X image at Leyland Observatory is shown here. Visit my website to see the other activities last month

18 A LETTER FROM THE SOCIETY SECRETARY GEORGE ERNEST GRUNDY IN DECEMBER 1913 More research from Peter Miskiw and Len Adam Peter Miskiw the BAS expert on the history of astronomy in Bolton has provided a copy of letter dated 27 th December 1913 relating to a potential speaker at a society meeting. The letter is addressed to the secretary of the Bolton Field Naturalists Society (Thomas K. Holden - not to be confused with the Holden telescope T.W. Holden) from the astronomy section secretary George E. Grundy, referring to a request to Thomas Thorp - a well known amateur astronomer and scientific and technical genius to speak at a meeting on 23 rd March We don t believe this event took place suspecting that Thorp was ill and that is why he did not reply in fact he died on June 13 th in (See the reason below). The letter was written by the astronomy section secretary George E. Grundy in this street ( 2012 streetview image) and below is the very house in the address! I don t know what the writer would have thought of the following: Street_is_the_star_as_film_company_comes_to_t own/ Reference is made to T. Thorp (There is not actually an e at the end) of Whitefield who also had a property (and observatory) in Prestatyn that I have managed to track down following the clues in the cutting sent by Peter and in the Wikipedia article about him. It is not one of the properties that Peter has pictures of but does have a dome in the roof. (See below) The property in Whitefield is evidently still there and I have tracked down what I think is the road but trees obscure the houses. ( Streetview).

19 First of all though who was George Grundy. Read this extract from Peter: So it was George that bought Hunt s Nurseries later known as Grundy s Nurseries (see the last article on the Markland Hill Observatory) that was the society observatory site. This was quite a change for George for the better I suspect as his previous occupation was as a Stover in the Bleach Works. (Or is it Stoker? ) (See 1911 Census extract below) Now on to the potential speaker Thomas Thorp Here is an article extract about him:

20 Markland Hill Observatory Looking North on Towncroft Lane from Verdure Avenue This is Thomas Thorp with a British Astronomical Association group attending the solar eclipse in Algiers in Peter asks if anyone can fathom out what the equipment is in front of him. See later I have solved it! ( LA) His obituary from the Royal Astronomical Society (elected 1902) is here and tells an amazing story / html Rumour has it that he was unfortunate enough to meet Marie Curie who made a gift of some radium in a metal container to him he used to keep it in his pocket! He died eventually of radiation poisoning at his home in Prestatyn!

21 This is Uplands where Thomas Thorp died in The images are from Streetview. There is another image and a brief article about him on this website. page-14 In this it says that he also invented the coin operated gas meter and the colour camera... Read all about him on Wikipedia: as_thorp_(scientific_instrument_m anufacturer) And here: homas_thorp_in_algiers,_may_19 00.png

22 In researching Thorp further I discovered he was a Vice-President of Manchester Astronomical Society. In doing so I discovered that the society history describes exactly what I believe he was doing in the photograph in Algiers in The link here describes it. One novel application of his celluloid replica grating was the direct observation of the solar chromosphere during the total eclipse of By placing the grating in front of one object lens of a pair of binoculars and viewing the eclipsed sun by looking downwards through the instrument at the sun reflected in a silvered mirror, he was able to watch as the spectrum at the solar limb suddenly reversed as the hydrogen alpha line in the chromosphere flashed into view. This so-called flash spectrum is caused by ionised hydrogen in the solar chromosphere. In fact there is an image of a flash spectrum using this technique in the Wikipedia article! He attended another total eclipse in 1905 in Burgos in Spain where this relates to! From Wikipedia: Thorp's Whitefield house was called Moss Bank, on Knowsley Street; and that in Prestatyn was The Uplands. [19][20] As of 2012 [update] both still exist. Around 1883 Thomas Thorp established an engineering business in Victoria Lane, complete with an astronomical observatory on its roof for his own use. He invented the penny-in-theslot gas meter (Link below) Known as Narrow Lane at the time) [So could there be a third observatory?)

23 The above census extract shows 3 sons with one called Franklin which corresponds to the Wikipedia reference so it is pretty certain that this is the correct address in Whitefield. ( It is Knowsley Road not Knowsley Street - The 45 is not the house number.) This could be the other house with an observatory but it can t be traced on street view. If anyone is passing could they try and spot a dome? Finally there is another reference to a speaker in the letter a Mr G. Gibbs. I think this is him in a Stonyhurst College report. Can members find any other references to G. Gibbs? More to follow. Peter Miskiw and Len Adam

24 November Objects of Interest 2012 T Brandwood STELLARIUM VIEW OF THE SOUTHERN SKY AT 10 P.M.ON 1 ST NOVEMBER 2012 D Ratledge Len Adam Len Adam Len Adam On 25 th February 2012 the Moon is close Len to Venus Adam shown at 7pm. Len Adam Jupiter is Click higher on up the the image ecliptic above between to see Cetus the Hubblesite and Aries video of the November 2012 Night sky.

25 Meetings Schedule November 2012 to May 2013 Meetings are held each month on Tuesday evenings, commencing at 7:30pm and concluding around 9pm. Our main meeting programme runs from September to May, and features a mixture of formal lectures and informal "Activity Nights". Activity nights will be posted on the website so keep an eye on that for details. Admission is free to members, and visitors are welcome at 2 per visit. Over the summer we also get together on the first Tuesdays of June, July and August. The programme of our future meetings is shown below, but may occasionally be subject to late changes, so if you're travelling from some distance, please contact the BAS Committee by to boltonastro@gmail.com to confirm before making your journey. There are 9 issues of the Society Newsletter per annum with a summer break in June, July and August The Newsletter is an online PDF that can be downloaded and printed if required. Sierra Stars 0.61m Cass 180s exposure 02h 38m PST 30 Sep 2011 (10h 38m GMT) Len Adam

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